“Tariffs were going to go up after Lincoln was elected but Southerners in Congress would have been able to resist large increases if they wished to. What the secessionists could do (or thought they could do) in the Confederacy that they couldn’t do in the Union was secure the survival of slavery.”
Your comments are interesting.
You argue that the South could not secure the survival of slavery in the Union even though a constitutional amendment requires a vote of two thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three fourths of the states (similar percentages if Convention used.)
At the same time you argue the South could have stopped confiscatory taxation where tariff proponents needed just a majority.
Your arithmetic does not add up.
Don't put words in my mouth. I say that the secessionist firebrands thought that secession would secure the survival of slavery, though they may have been wrong about that. They thought the election of "Black Republican" would undermine the institution of slavery. That was their thinking, not mine. Maybe it was the blow to their collective ego that the election of a Republican involved, or maybe it was just blind panic, but concern about the future of slavery was the reason they wanted out - whether or not their thinking made sense.
At the same time you argue the South could have stopped confiscatory taxation where tariff proponents needed just a majority.
Stop putting words into my mouth. "Confiscatory taxation" is your term not mine, or one anybody without an axe to grind would apply to the tariff of the 1850s, or even the original Morrill tariff.
Your arithmetic does not add up.
Had all the Southern Senators remained in Congress they could have blocked or held up legislation with the filibuster. Even today it takes more than a simple majority to put major legislation through Congress.
If the slave state delegations in Congress were resourceful enough they could have used other tactics to frustrate the other side. Not splitting the party in 1860 probably would have guaranteed more Democratic Senators and Representatives in Washington.